


The Man from D.A.R.K.N.E.S.S.

by deathrae



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/M, Oops, Poison, genre-appropriate implied violence, it's also the longest thing I've written in a LONGASS TIME, this is hands-down the most elaborate and complete AU I've ever written, this is what we get when I write gift fic right after watching Spectre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5481659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anarchist terrorist faction: "The Unversed." Led by: "Shatterheart." Sometimes "The Man in the Mask."</p>
<p>When one of their own goes missing, presumed defection, Agents A and T must embark on one of their hardest missions yet. One that will test the utmost boundaries of their faith to their organization...and each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Berlin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vintageAerith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vintageAerith/gifts).



> A gift for my good friend and roommate! *u* Merry Christmas Lauren!

Paramilitary counter-intelligence agents don’t run, or so Agent T tended to believe. Running was for marathoners. Sprinters. _Civilians_. _Spies_ don’t run, they advance. Retreat. Strafe. They move like snakes and swoop like falcons and sting like scorpions.

Strike, withdraw.

Strike, _kill_.

However, T was known to occasionally make exceptions. Really, T was known to make a great deal of exceptions. It was on almost every review and psych evaluation he’d ever had.

“ _Makes exceptions. Jeopardizes missions by making personal judgement calls. Walks the line between our side and opposing side too often. Fieldwork assigned only under caution._ ”

He preferred to believe he was being flexible. Making exceptions meant he could act on the fly if things went to hell.

Like now, for instance.

Like now, while he and Agent A were racing across rooftops of northern Berlin like they’d had a route prepped, leaping from balcony to balcony, scrambling up trellises and vaulting over low railings. This whole mission had gone sideways pretty much immediately. Someone’d tipped off their target, the international terrorist faction called colloquially “the Unversed.” The kingpin, the anarchist “Shatterheart,” had rabbited well before they’d arrived. They’d taken down as many of the Unversed as they could before they were forced to abandon their position, though she’d snuck out a hard drive of at least half of Shatterheart’s files in the process. Net win, he’d say. Lost the man, but gained an edge.

That and she was a downright wizard with those small land mines she kept stars-knew-where. The Unversed wouldn’t be able to use that safehouse again, that was for _damn_ sure.

When they stopped running, it was after nightfall. A slid off the roof to a balcony on the floor above theirs, then slid over the side to drop to their room’s railing. Her shoes hit pavement like a whisper but she lurched into their room with a loud, agonized groan, the only sound he’d heard her make in almost an hour. He followed, concerned. She moved to clear the closet, but he set a hand on her arm.

“Let me,” he whispered. She was deathly pale, and perhaps most worryingly of all, she let him do it, collapsing into a chair by the window. He checked the closet, under the bed, and their tiny bathroom. He tapped the front door’s latch to confirm it was engaged and undisturbed, then pulled a first-aid kit from his duffel and a towel from the bathroom.

She cracked open an eye to look at him. “I s’pose I should move,” she muttered as he lay the towel out on the bed.

“It’s not called bedside manner for nothing, you know.”

She snorted but hauled herself out of her chair, shrugging out of her bloodstained sportcoat and handing it to him. He pulled her shoulder holster down her arms and made quick work of the buttons on her shirt, putting it and the jacket directly into a plastic bag from his duffel. He winced as he rolled up the sleeve of the thin white shirt that fitted her like a second skin, plastered to her now with sweat and blood. There was a gash across her arm where a bullet had ripped through muscle and skin like a letter-opener.

“Near miss here,” he muttered, and she grimaced, but watched him as he cleaned it, stitched it, wrapped it in bandage. They were lucky Agent V wasn’t here—he’d like as not have fainted from all the blood. He wasn’t exactly used to fieldwork.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Looks a bit rough,” he said, fetching a glass of water and painkillers. “Try not to use it much till we can get you patched up for real.”

“Yes mum,” she muttered, but downed the medicine with a sigh of relief. She looked him over when she was done. “You’re not hurt, then?”

“Nah,” he said, squinting into a mirror to set a bit of tape over a cut up his forehead where shrapnel had left streaks of blood. There was blood across his shirt but it was all hers. Well, some was his. Head wounds always bled like a firehose. “Lucky us the Unversed are all terrible shots. You took the only bullet that might’ve actually hit me, I think.”

“And they say chivalry is dead.”

He laughed, hiding a wince when his chest ached. Too many impacts with balcony railings and walls during their mad dash across town.

She watched him. Watched him laugh, watched him tilt his head back like he were actually comfortable here, like he’d finally slipped out of mission mode to his usual self. But when he looked at her again, there was a spark there, a fire in his eyes that made her gut twist with heat.

“Gentle, mind you,” she murmured, as he kicked off his shoes and leaned over her, guiding her backward. She hissed when her shoulders met the bed. “And next time, we need a getaway car,” she added as an afterthought, breath catching when he slid a hand up her stomach, his palm hot on her skin. “I hate running in dress shoes.”

“At least you didn’t have heels this time,” he muttered, leaning so close her breath mixed with his.

“Thank the stars for _that_ ,” she huffed, and he laughed. His lips brushed hers, teasing her closer, enticing her to lean up into him. She did, and his teeth dug into her lip, pulling, tugging at her mouth as much as her heart, and she followed all too willingly.

He pushed her shirt up to the band of her bra and kissed his way down her skin.

“Okay, while I’m not opposed,” she began, and he made a vaguely interested noise against her chest. “This isn’t technically what I meant by ‘lay low.’”

“No, but that’s only because you have no sense of fun,” he said, and she could feel his mouth form each word, feel the way his tongue drew back on n’s and then surged forward to lick at her skin. “The Master won’t expect us back for debriefing for hours. We’ve earned a moment’s rest if you ask me.”

She hummed in agreement and he slid the button of her slacks free as she squirmed under his mouth, her body too warm as he pulled her pants down and slid his face just a little lower, his nose pressing against her.

He helped her scoot back a little more when putting her weight on her arm earned a strangled groan, then slid low again, dragging a very _different_ sound from her throat.

It was well and truly night when they stopped, when he rolled away to lay on his back and stare at the ceiling, brushing a hand through his hair, damp from sweat. She sat up like an old woman, slow and ginger from sore muscles and aching bones. She felt sticky with blood and antiseptic and…well.

A nightclub down Eichhornstraße, two blocks from their hotel, was blasting music she couldn’t make out a melody to, just a fast, catchy bass beat that had his fingers tapping out the rhythm on her hip.

This was something they weren’t supposed to have. The eyes of storms. These moments of peace. Of solace. Of quiet between missions.

Spies can’t get attached, that much she believed. Attachment could get you a failed mission. Or it could get you killed. It shouldn’t work, what they had. But they made it work anyway, out of spite or skill or both. She wasn’t sure.

“Hey,” he murmured, and she turned to look at him, brushing her hair behind her ear with her fingers. He was staring at the ceiling, his eyes glazed with sleepiness and disconnection.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“If someone had me prisoner and it was me or the job. Which would you take.”

He knew the answer to this. She knew he did. But he needed to hear it anyway. He rolled his head to the side to watch her.

“I’d put the mission first,” she lied.

He nodded, satisfied.

 “Me too,” he lied.

Maybe that’s why it worked.

Maybe they’d never know why. Maybe it wouldn’t last out the next day, or the next week. But they’d figure it out, one way or another.

***

The debrief was straightforward enough. The hard drive, in the meantime, was handed off to the quartermaster division for analysis, and the Master sent them back to the Castle for leave while the files were decrypted. They took the downtime without comment, grateful to have some time to rest. And heal, in A’s case. The remnants of their gear went back to the armory, and the handful of incriminating evidence was summarily consigned to an incinerator.

It was a shame, really. T had rather liked that shirt.

***

Head of the quartermaster division, codenamed “L,” cursed like a sailor when all his screens flashed dead-ends. His assistant/code-monkey/occasional decoy secretary, K, leaned over his shoulder. “Is this really all that was on that drive?” she whispered, not to him, because that was liable to make him all the angrier, but she wasn’t really making much effort for him not to hear. He shoved away from his desk and slammed his fist into the concrete wall behind his chair, white pain shooting up his arm from the impact.

“Do you feel better now?” she asked, without looking away from his screen. She tapped through a few of the readouts. Personnel lists full of joke names and cartoon characters, troop movements that, when deployed, were just football plays and basketball drills…a set of satellite photos that just showed a landing strip laid out with lights reading _answer hazy, ask again later_.

“Bastard,” L was muttering, “Lying conniving little shit, I want to smear his fuckin’ ‘shattered heart’ across five highways and light all of it on fire! If I get my hands on him I swear to fucking—”

K stopped listening, only offering a distracted “oh go have a smoke will you” to him, repeating it a little more forcefully when he didn’t even stop for a breath to have heard her. “ _Outside_ ,” she added. He cursed her under his breath, grabbed his black leather jacket and a pack of Silk Cuts from his desk. He wrapped one of his hideous yellow scarves around his neck as he stormed out of the room, down the stairs to the common hall, and then up toward the elevator out of their converted concrete bunker.

She didn’t look over, even when new footsteps rang through the doorway. A _clank clank_ on the steel door made her call out “come on up!” as she tapped through a few more files and opened one of L’s decryption programs, gutting it with a few keystrokes.

R, from Weapons and Development, leaned against the concrete pylon near L’s desk.

“Hey,” he said softly, and she raised a hand briefly in acknowledgement, tweaking source code. “L will kill you for tampering with his code, won’t he?”

“Yeah,” she muttered, fingers tapping out an almost casual drumbeat on L’s keyboard. “But I’ve got a hunch about these Shatterheart files. Double-encrypted, I’d bet money on it. Hidden files under the false ones. Facades. He’s all about hidden shit, what with his Jungian emotion nonsense. And if I’m right, L’s gonna owe me sushi for a month.”

“Mm.”

She paused at the end of a line and glanced his way. He was in his work clothes, tight black shirt, baggy jeans that looked vaguely like he’d taken fashion advice from a hazmat suit (but which, he claimed, had no fewer than _twelve_ functioning pockets, and he supposedly used them all), and steel-toed boots. Safety goggles hung around his neck and his bleach-silver hair was tied back in a high tail, his face smudged and grease smeared across the right side of his head where the hair was buzzed short. One hand was tucked into one of his accursed pockets, the other holding a coffee mug to his mouth. He was every bit the picture of a tech who’d been up all night brewing up some new gadget, and as if following a cue, he yawned behind his mug.

She grinned, her attention slowly leeching away from the decryption software. “Cooked up something good for us this time, did you?”

“I think so,” he said, handing her a small box from his pocket that looked like it could’ve held an engagement ring.

“Aw R you shouldn’t have.” She flicked her gaze up to him again before she opened it. “It’s _safe_ , right?” R’s second in command, S, had once signed off on an experimental explosive to be sent to quartermaster division. _Without_ sharing how sensitive it was to cigarette smoke.

It had taken months for L’s eyebrows to grow back in, and while she’d never tell him to his face, they’d never quite looked the same after that.

“It’s safe,” he said.

She cracked it open, revealing a delicate ring with detailing like a small silver crown on the top. “What’s it do?” she asked, removing the ring and turning it to see it in the light.

“Opens any lock,” he said.

“It does _not_ ,” she huffed. “That would be _well_ beyond the scope of non-invasive, non-cyber technology. I can barely make that work using twelve different programs, six microchips, and two CPUs on _steroids_.” He raised his eyebrows and she set the ring down and closed the box. “No. I refuse to believe it. You’ve gotta be pulling my leg.” She tapped away a few more lines of code. “That’s ridiculous. Even for you.”

“ _Ridiculous_?” he echoed, and laughed. “Oi, what did you think the R _stood for_ , anyway?”


	2. Paris

A and T were lounging when the call came in, flopped over weight-training equipment in the gym in the Castle’s east wing. She mopped sweat from her face as he lay on the floor and panted like a dog, watching the way his chest heaved on each breath. Her arm, the skin tight around her new scar, was healing up nicely. Her round at the range that morning proved her targeting was back up to normal, though she still tired a little faster than she’d like. That, at least, would end with time. Her aim had been the scarier thing to recover.

His phone buzzed. She was closer to his duffel. She dug into it and tossed it to him.

“Go,” he mumbled into the mic.

There was a moment’s pause as his receiver crackled with words she didn’t quite catch, their phones each designed to garble past a couple inches.

But he sat straight up from the floor, back tense as a bridge cable, and she knew who it was without having to hear a word.

She gathered her things.

***

The Master’s office was a lot like the Master himself. Oddly warm and plain on the surface, but with the oddest sense of something lurking underneath. His cabinets were always tidy, his books always neatly organized on the shelves. A diploma hung on the wall behind him, signed and framed like in any other director’s office across the country.

But most directors were not like the Master. Most directors did not oversee the training and implementation of half a dozen elite paramilitary counter-intelligence agents at a time.

Unlike most directors, also, the Master spent very little time sitting at his desk. Instead he often stood by the large windows that spanned one wall, which always seemed to light him just so, so that his face was mostly shadowed. Still, they knew his face well, and the cruel scars cut across his cheeks were familiar enough to stand out despite the relative darkness. He turned halfway to look at them as they slipped into his room, his white coat cast with dark shadows.

“There’s been a development in the Shatterheart case,” he said without preamble, his voice calm and deep but laced with a strain they were unused to.

When he didn’t say anything for a moment, A glanced to her partner and then stepped forward slightly. “Sir?”

The Master sighed heavily and set his hands on the back of his chair, leaning into the glow of the fluorescents overhead. In the harsh light his eyes seemed more sunken than usual, his face almost gaunt. His hands were gnarled with age and use, the dark scars on his face seeming almost black.

“An agent has gone rogue from this facility.”

“ _What_?” T stepped forward to keep level with A. “Sir, there’s hardly anyone else who’s been here recently but us.”

A gasped and T snapped his head around to look at her.

“Sir, you don’t mean V, do you?”

The Master looked away, toward the ground. “I do. V has left the facility without orders, without approval. No weapons. He made it out with barely more than a beddown kit and one gadget from Quartermaster. They’re working through the filing system to figure out what it was. Whatever it is he stole it was relatively old.”

“Apparently, if they can’t even work out what it was,” T muttered, his voice twisting on a poorly hidden sneer. T’s open rivalry with L was one of the Castle’s worst-kept secrets.

A quelled the urge to elbow him. “But V shouldn’t have even been able to access the Quartermaster archives.”

“No, he shouldn’t have, but there was a counter-breach just after L broke the decryption on Shatterheart’s files. We checked into it, obviously, but it seemed that only parameters were changed. Nothing else. So it was de-prioritized. No one expected V to take advantage.”

T’s hands had balled into fists. “Sir, you can’t seriously be implying that V is…he’s one of _ours_ , sir!”

“Is he?”

T jerked back, his stoic mask fracturing.

A stepped forward with a click of her heel that made T withdraw. Habit. Communications that were so practiced they came naturally no matter where they were, who they were talking to. Tiny signals that meant _stop_ , _go_ , _run_ , _report in_ , or _help_.

Though this was the first time they’d relied on such things in the _Master’s_ office.

“Sir,” A began, lacing her hands together behind her back. “Whatever’s happening, I’m sure it’s more complex than it currently looks. With your permission, T and I will go and find V. He can’t have gotten that far yet. We’ll find him, figure out what’s going on, and bring him home.”

The Master narrowed his eyes. “And if you can’t?”

“Then we’ll neutralize him personally.”

T hissed in frustration but clicked his heels together and nodded.

“We won’t let you down,” he said.

“Fine,” the Master said, after looking them both over. “Go. Pack your things. I’ll get requisitions down to Quartermaster and Weapons to make sure you get full kits.” He fixed a steely look on A, his fingers digging into the back of his chair. “ _Find him_ , A. If what I think is happening…” He went quiet, and A didn’t like the look in his eye, but she couldn’t quite pin down why. “If I am right, it will get much worse before we’re done.”

***

The hall echoed with the heels of their boots. They were back in base gear, strapped into belts with ammunition pouches hidden under joints and in the hollows of bones where a standard suit and tie would cover. His hair was still wet from a shower and tied back into a messy tail, his boots louder than hers and clacking unpleasantly as he scuffed at the floor.

“You don’t really intend,” he started, cutting off only at a loud warning _click_ of her heel.

“Of course I don’t,” she snapped, her voice low and sharp like forged steel.

A protest was born and died on his tongue as he opened his mouth, stopped, and closed it again. Before they reached the next doorway he grabbed her arm. She hissed a warning but he spun her around, pressing her shoulders up to the wall, caging her with his hands.

_I could kiss you_ , his eyes said. Finally caught up to what she was planning, then. It was a blessing he was relatively quick on the uptake, even if she tended to be the brains of their operations.

_Do it_ , said hers.

Before missions he always kissed her the same—overwhelming, hungry, desperate, like he had no idea if this would be the last. Teeth nipping, tongue slick against her own. Matching her fervor with his. Someday it would be the last, she thought, but not this one. Not today.

She pushed him back too soon and he looked very much like he had every intention of leaning back in.

“Armory,” she breathed. He sighed, rather more dramatically than was required, and withdrew. She led the way through the last corridor and greeted R with a thin, slight nod.

He nodded back, and led them to a table laid out with their gear. Most of it was nonlethal. Stun guns, shock pads, grappling cables.

Pistols for a last resort.

A quick glance at T’s face showed him stony with focus. For a moment she imagined the capture-not-kill loadout was for their benefit, to make it easier on them to go into combat after an agent they all too often thought of as a son or a little brother.

She brushed the thought away. It was only fantasy. The Master wanted answers. He wanted an informant. Generally speaking, body counts didn’t yield much information. That was his only concern.

Weapons Tech Lieutenant “S,” as bright-eyed and bed-headed as usual, helped them pack their bags and slid their gear into place. But despite the smile on his face and the hum from his mouth, he was quieter than normal. There was a sorrow behind his eyes that made A’s chest ache. He and V had always been thick as thieves, never far from each other, especially when trouble was starting.

As if reading her mind, T patted the gun tech’s shoulder. “Hey. S. We’ll bring him home. We’ll figure out what’s happened to him.”

S’s mouth tripped over a smile, and he didn’t trust his voice, given the way he hastily left the room.

“Thanks,” R said under his breath to A while S got back to work further down the bunker. “He’s been out of sorts since your requisitions came in. We didn’t even know it was V when we got lockdown orders. We figured it was a mistake, not a raid on Quartermaster.”

“We’ll sort this out,” she said, and tugged on R’s goggles. “Don’t you worry.”

“L wants to see you,” he said with a wry smile, pulling his goggles from her grip. “Sounds like he’s got something special cooked up for you.”

“Sounds combustible,” she said, heading toward the door, and R laughed.

“When isn’t it?”

***

K got their suits and buttoned them in, tying T’s tie for him while L grumpily read through reports on his screen. A cigarette, unlit, was precariously clinging to his lip, and K kept side-eying it now and then as if she was half a second from telling L to get rid of it or asking for it for her own use. Which, A wasn’t sure.

A cleared her throat and L finally looked up. “R said you wanted us.”

L blinked several times in succession, then jumped out of his chair fast enough to make T jerk and reach for a gun.

“Easy there twitchy,” L grumbled, heading to a table further in.

T grumbled until A elbowed him.

L sifted through folders, then pointed for K to fetch a box. “R’s given us a new prototype. We want you to test it.”

“Odd that he didn’t share that when we were talking to him,” A said, but glanced toward K as she came back with a box about the size of a ring.

“It’s very…unique. And with the recent security breach. Well.”

T opened his mouth to say something, then stopped. A tapped her foot as if she were impatient, a quick double-tap serving as her thanks. He nodded, just slightly.

“Makes sense I suppose. What is it?”

“It’s a lock-pick,” he said, with all the lackluster gusto of a machine-generated train announcer.

“A lock-pick,” T echoed, staring at the box as K opened it. A hesitated, looked to L for confirmation, then picked up the ring, turning it to examine the crown.

“It’s part nano-tech,” K explained, closing the box. “Part bio-scanner…part magnet…part wish fulfillment, if you ask me. Just hold it to a lock, and...tada. Supposedly.”

L shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest. “I want you to test it for us. This should be a good field run.”

She shrugged and slid it onto her right hand. It was oddly light, but perhaps most odd of all was that it _felt_ right on her hand. Like it belonged there.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

***

They’d both been to Paris on prior jobs. Escorts, interrogations, package interceptions, you name it, they’d done it. Against all talk to the contrary, Paris somehow seemed like the magnetic center for all the stupid illegal international shit no one was allowed to talk about in polite society, all collecting there like trash down a drain.

They’d never done _this_ before, though. Tracking a rogue agent through three changed flights, two baggage claim recalls, and four taxi agencies. That was a bit different.

T talked to a porter while she sifted through messages on her phone, looking for updates. He had a better Parisian accent, which was definitely the reason she had him do the talking and _not_ that she liked the sound of his voice rolling over French vowels.

He led the way through the airport and opened the door to the rented Renault for her, scanning the street as she set down her bag and climbed inside. Across the street a short man in a long black coat watched her. When T got into the car and started the engine the man got into a taxi, sunlight glinting off a Venetian mask styled like a black falcon with outstretched wings obscuring his hairline.

The taxi didn’t move until they did, pulling into traffic behind them.

“ _Le taxi_ ,” she murmured.

“ _Qui porte un **masque** en public_ ,” he muttered, and she smirked, watching the side mirror. The taxi kept pace with them all along Route des Badauds, but slipped a car-length back on the highway. Now and then she saw its lights flash as it swung around other vehicles, trailing them. T was clutching the wheel with one hand, his knuckles pale against his rich, dark skin, the other resting on the gear shift. She laced her fingers into his, tracing the lines in his palm with her fingernails until he uncoiled, exhaling heavily.

They drove until it got dark and then kept going, out of town, out to the south toward Orléans. They stopped once to refill the tank, and while T went to get bottles of water she got out of the car and stretched. Lights pulled off the highway into a parking lot further off. This man in the mask was determined.

Footsteps, too light for T, too heavy for V.

“A.”

She froze. That _was_ V’s voice, but rough. Low. Wrong. There was a stun gun on her, tucked into her belt, but right when she shifted to free up her shoulder and reach for it, metal pressed to her back. She stopped dead. It was small, rigid, right over her spine, a center hole fitting perfectly over a vertebrae.

Gun barrel.

_He wouldn’t_.

Low-gauge, but at this range it wouldn’t matter.

… _would he?_

She twitched her fingers upward, as close to raising her arms in surrender as she could get without something showing on the CCTV camera watching from two pumps away. He grunted in acknowledgement. Neither of them wanted the _Gendarmerie_ involved.

“You know how this works.”

“I do.”

“Good, I can skip to the point.” He chuckled. It sounded like V but…didn’t. “You shouldn’t have followed me out here, A.”

“No? You went rogue.”

“Exactly. Which leads me to the only possible conclusion that you’re here to retrieve me.”

“V, you can still come home. The Master would take you back in.”

He laughed, and it made her blood run cold. It didn’t sound like him. It was high, mad. Frenetic. Even less like himself than anything else he’d said so far. “You’re lying. He’s kept me on a six-inch leash this whole time, and now I’ve proven his fears right by turning. Why would I go back to him after all this? I’m finally free. I can go wherever I want. Do whatever I want. Why would I go back?”

“Because it’s home. Because we’re your family,” she said, turning her head, looking out across the hood of the car. A slight twist let her look at him, just from the corner of her eye. He looked the same, but his eyes were different. They were cold, and his smile was cruel. He wasn’t the baby-faced V she remembered.

Something had changed.

“No, he said, his mouth twisting on a sneer. “You’re my _fools_.” In the glow from the petrol station lights his eyes flashed, seeming almost gold under the fluorescents. “I’ve played you all along, and none of you want to admit the truth, even to yourselves. You’re all dancing to _my_ tune now.”

“V,” she said, and he barked a laugh, shoving the barrel into her spine so she pressed closer to the car. She fell against the door, hands on the glass, heartrate finally starting to spike, slipping past her iron control. If he decided to shoot…best case, she’d never walk again. “You’re not this person.”

“Appealing to my better nature?” he murmured. “Don’t bother.”

In the gleam of the hood of their car she saw T coming closer.

“And why not? You were always the best of us.”

He tensed, pressed the barrel harder into her spine so that she winced, prayed he didn’t pull the trigger by mistake. She gasped against the window and the glass fogged.

“No,” he whispered, leaning closer to her shoulder, leaning up so she could hear him better, focused on her. T stole up closer while he was distracted. “You were always the best of us, A. The perfect soldier. The perfect dog, obedient to the Master’s whims, _dancing_ along to his command even if you didn’t want to. At least T could think for himself.”

He pulled back and raised his voice suddenly, head turned away.

“Couldn’t you, T?”

A growl of frustration and T lunged with the stun gun, his hand crackling visibly with blue static. V bent away like water, curling and twisting like a snake, and the gun clipped A’s shoulder instead. She screamed. Or was that just the voltage scrambling her senses? The shock of raw electricity flooding her arm and chest sent her crumpling to the pavement, feeling like her teeth were rattling in her skull. She convulsed, her back pressed to steel and tire, riding shock after shock. She heard a gunshot, then T’s roar of pain and anger. Footsteps, fast, heading for the dirt beyond the parking lot, off the road. She wondered vaguely if V had scrambled the CCTV before he even approached her. He’d always been one of their best with exfiltration, he would’ve been prepared from the start.

T grabbed her by the shoulder and hauled her up to sitting. She felt singed, raw. He patted her face, checked her mouth for blood from a bit lip or tongue, then squeezed her hand.

“You’re alright,” he said, and she shook her head to clear the static.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. What did he hit?”

He turned to show her the blood seeping through his right pant leg, just below the knee. “Aimed to slow, not kill, so there’s that at least. There’s some of V left in there, A, I know it.”

“Yeah,” she lied, then looked him in the eye. “I’ll drive.”

***

T set up in the backseat with a towel from her bag and their med kit, a flashlight taped to the seatbelt.

Not exactly a grade-A surgery, but it’d do.

A got them back on the highway and struggled to avoid the rougher patches of asphalt for him, but now and then he cursed and hissed in pain. The taxi followed, but more leisurely now. She slid a receiver into her ear, checked the rearview mirror again, and cursed the driver in a few different languages. She dialed back to Quartermaster.

“A? We’ve got you.” L’s voice was warm, glad, if a little clumsy. He wasn’t good with affection, never had been.

“Secure line?” she asked, trying to ignore T’s heavy breathing and occasional snarl of pain as he worked the bullet out of his leg.

Only at the sound of keys tapping on the other end, cross-checking and confirming, did she breathe a little easier.

“Secure as secure gets, m’lady,” L said. She’d never been so grateful for his flippant comments.

“Glad to hear a familiar voice that doesn’t want to kill me,” she muttered, and L’s displeased “hrm” was so quintessentially _him_ that she could imagine his frown. “We found V.”

“Well shit.”

“Mm. I’m an hour away from Tours and I need to know where he’s going.”

The taxi’s headlights were getting awful bright in her rearview mirror, and she glanced back more and more often to check.

“Damn, lady, you don’t pull punches with your requests.”

“Trust me, I wish I could give you a cakewalk.”

She swerved slightly to avoid a pothole and T’s answering wail of pain was audible through the belt he’d shoved in his mouth. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“What was that, did you hit a coyote?” L asked. He said the word like only Americans did.

“T was shot. We’re handling it.”

“He _shot_ you?”

A bit the inside of her cheek and didn’t answer.

Thankfully he dropped it. “A, listen, I’ve been fiddling with R’s second prototype for the ring. You should be able to create a force barrier with it using the nanotech. Temporary, but a barrier. If K’s calculations are right—” At that K’s voice cut in from the background, yelling _damn right my math is always right!_ “— _if_ her math is right, it should even stop bullets.”

“Hm.”

“I didn’t mention it earlier because I didn’t think you’d actually have to _test_ it. Anyway. I’ll send you details on a hotel to stay in.”

She leaned into her headset, trying to hear him over the roar of an engine behind her.

“I’ll run every trace I can think of, try to figure out what alias he might be using, see if he’s heading out of the country. When I have a flight for you, I’ll let you know.”

“Right.” A frowned, watching road signs pass by as blurs, watching a truck rumble by in her side mirror. “Hey. L. Are there any events coming up? Dances. Balls. Something like that. Something that might get Shatterheart’s attention. V said… I dunno. Weird metaphors about dancing. Twice.”

T leaned closer to her shoulder. “You think it was a hint?”

“ _Maybe_.” She glanced over at him with a frown. “Fix your damn leg, T.”

L’s voice crackled, interrupting. “V’s giving you hints?”

T stayed close enough to hear through the receiver and chuckled when A swatted at him. “Jury’s out on if he’s totally theirs, L,” he said, and L huffed in her ear. “Can you scan footage of his room in the Castle for me? Tell me if there’s anything out of order.”

“I’ll do what I can,” L said, and she could hear tapping as he took notes.

“Thanks,” A said, frowning at her rearview. In the darkness it was hard to tell, but when she checked the side mirror, what was unquestionably a rifle barrel was peeking out of the taxi’s window. “L, I gotta go.”

“A, what the fuck, I—”

The call clicked when she swiped a hand to the headset.

“T, I hope you’re actually wrapped up, it’s about to get bumpy.”

“Fucking perfect,” he sighed, which she took as a good sign. “Yeah, I’m clear.”

“Good,” she said, stepping on the gas until T grabbed the back of her seat. “That man in the mask isn’t done with us yet.”

“I hate him already,” T grumbled as A swerved and snaked across the empty highway, orange-red in her side mirrors flashing the impact of bullets on the pavement behind their tires. “Who the hell _is_ he anyway?”

“No idea,” she snapped, watching the taxi’s headlights skimming across the horizon past them as she revved the engine higher. “Feel free to get L on the case when we’re _not_ getting shot at. Think you can do anything about this mess?”

T rooted through his bag. “Maybe so,” he said with a chuckle and the sound of metal grinding on metal, pieces twisting and clicking into place as he assembled a rifle. “Just try to give me a clear shot,” he said, rolling down his window.

Road signs glowed neon in her headlights and she yelped, weaving through a series of cones and onto an unpaved section of the highway, her joints rattling with the grinding impact of tire on gravel. He hung half out the window and cursed under his breath, squinting through the gloom.

“Still after us,” he reported, when they screeched back up onto solid road, their tires groaning and spitting up dust and bits of stone.

“I really wish you were driving,” she grumbled, throwing her weight into each turn as she pulled them toward an exit and then back into the center of the road. The taxi, heavier and broader than they were, skidded down the off-ramp, clipping a concrete pylon with a sickening crunch of metal.

“I wish I was driving too,” he said, and laughed when she chose some particularly colorful names for him.

“Two o’clock,” she snapped, and he slid to the other window, rolling it down and setting up for a shot as the taxi burst up the next onramp, tires off the pavement before it hit the road with a crash and a skidding, squealing swerve.

T’s first shot clipped a door, sending up sparks and making the gunman vanish back into the car. The second broke the window he’d been sheltering behind and she caught, just barely carrying over the wind, fluent cursing in French. That, at least, made her laugh, even as she swerved to avoid slamming a concrete barrier dead on.

“If you wouldn’t mind laying off the sudden turns,” he grumbled, lining up one more shot.

“Trust me, I’d like to,” she snapped, throwing the brake to skid between two rows of hot, drying concrete, her tires screaming and spraying water out of a ditch.

T fired, burying a hunk of iron into the driver-side tire, and in her rearview she saw the taxi swerve and spin, rubber peeling off in sheets as it tore across the road and scattered the orange cones.

“Ha!” T pulled back into the car and rolled up the windows, pulling apart his gun to stow it back in his bag.

A momentary backward glance afforded her a bizarre image—a figure in a black coat climbing out of the taxi, silhouetted by its mangled headlights, and throwing something, a bag perhaps, down at the ground in a fit of rage.

***

She didn’t breathe deeply again until they were in Tours, parked at the hotel, and their door was locked.

T limped, but he’d heal fast enough. She carried their bags, and no one even questioned the pallor of his face or the blood-streaked trousers. When they were upstairs she cleaned him up and re-wrapped his leg.

He tugged her into his lap when she was finished and let his hands express his gratitude instead of his voice, his lips wandering over her collarbone to kiss the shoulder he’d electrified, his teeth tracing apologies on her skin and his tongue soothing contact burns. He touched her like she was fragile, like she was new and untested, and sometimes that was frustrating but tonight... It felt like she was _real_ , even though everything V said was circling her mind like a dog chasing its own tail. His words had dug into her mind and crystallized, poking holes in everything. T’s hands felt like worship and his kisses felt like the one thing they weren’t supposed to ever have.

“Am I the Master’s dog,” she whispered, as his fingers tracked like praise across her ribs. The bathroom floor was cold against her bare shoulders but he pinned her there and loomed over her, his hands almost too warm to touch.

“No,” he said, his tongue licking away doubts from the sharp line of her hip. She wasn’t sure if he was lying.

“But what if I am?” she said. Insisted.

His fingers pressed, slid, curled, and she gasped, bending under him.

“Shh,” he said, and his mouth found the drumbeat of her pulse in her neck and bit, pulling at her skin. “We’ll talk about that later.”

This time he _was_ lying, but she didn’t mind.


	3. Bern

“A.”

The window slanted shafts of streetlight across her eyes. T was asleep, flopped across her body such that his arm weighed heavily across her chest. The light from the window cast yellow lines across his shoulders and the tangle of blankets around his waist.

“ _A_.”

“Hmn?” It came out as a mumble. T’s hair had gone everywhere, even in her mouth, and she groggily pawed it off her lips, then closed her eyes again.

 _It’s too early_.

“A. It’s L. If you don’t want to talk to me, you might want to try not answering your phone in your sleep.”

“I hate you,” she whispered grumpily, aware the receiver would pick it up. She’d evidently forgotten to take it out; her ear ached. He laughed, and she carefully rolled out from under T’s arm and stepped away from the bed to talk. “What is it?”

“Leads. Two.”

“That’s significantly better than the one-half of a lead I had when I fell asleep,” she admitted, and L chuckled. He sounded hollow, harried. He hadn’t slept. “Talk to me.”

“First off, you were right. There’s a diplomatic convention in Switzerland. Not exactly for public consumption, and it’s stayed largely off the radar, but nearly every first world country will have representatives in attendance and it starts tomorrow evening. Or, today, rather, considering it’s 3 in the morning.”

“Damn.”

“That’s the bad news.”

“Alright,” she said, slipping into the washroom to soak a washcloth and scrub the sleep from her face. “Is there good news, or just even-worse news?”

“I’m not sure which it is. But it’s about T’s theories.”

“Something in the footage?”

“Yeah. That breach. The parameter shift that we thought we only had to run background checks into.”

“I take it that wasn’t so minor after all.”

“And that’s why you get paid the big bucks,” he said with a laugh. “I found something. Seconds after the breach, so that’s just a few minutes after my initial decrypt of Shatterheart’s files. There’s a haze on camera feeds on V’s wing of the Castle. But it’s sloppy work. We’ve managed to clean up some of the footage. We’ve got visual of someone in a black bird mask in V’s rooms, talking to him. Male, by the looks of it. About V’s height. V nearly took a swing at him, so whatever he said, must’ve been nasty.”

A cursed fluently under her breath, rubbing her hand over her mouth.

L filled the ensuing pause with a hesitant hum. “I take it…you know him?”

“I suppose,” she said, grumbling, and started packing their bags. “That mask. Venetian style?” He grunted, agreeing. “He’s been following us since Paris. Nearly shot out our tires last night after I disconnected our call.”

“You know if you’d just _tell_ me when you’ve got a gunman on your tail I wouldn’t be so offended when you hang up on me.”

“Did he do something to V? Do you have enough of the footage clean to know?” she asked, ignoring him as she ran a brush through her hair and shook T’s shoulder to wake him.

“Not yet. I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve got anything solid, but it’s looking very plausible. If V really _was_ a sleeper, he didn’t activate as clean as our friend in the mask might’ve wanted him to. In the meantime, I’m sending you a rental ticket to pick up a new car in Tours. If Shatterheart is after this convention…”

He didn’t elaborate, but A didn’t need him to. She hummed in agreement and sighed into the mic.

His voice turned grim for a moment. “It’s six hours to Bern. You’ll need to move fast.”

“L… Thanks. You’re a life-saver.”

He chuckled. “What, and let you get killed in the field? Not likely.”

“That’s sweet of you.”

There was a short pause as he took a drag on a cigarette. “To hell with _sweet_ , I’d be out of a job. I _hate_ updating my résumé.”

***

A disliked airports. Too many sounds, too many faces, too many motives crammed into a huge public space with minimal available weaponry. They were in familiar cover—a vacationing couple on a tour of Europe. It was simple enough to maintain, and it made T’s fingers lacing into hers under the rental desk not only well-placed, but part of the display.

Which she appreciated.

As they waited for the keys to a silver-grey Peugeot T took her hand, pressing her knuckles to his lips and smiling in that way that was one-quarter him and three-quarters “Mister Tom Kingston.”

“Thanks dear,” she murmured, giving him a cautious, nervous-traveler smile that was far more genuine than she wanted it to be. She scanned the crowds while he gave their information to the clerk. Once she thought she saw the Venetian falcon mask, but it was only tourists and businessmen as far as the eye could see.

They took the car without incident, and disappeared into a wet fog. An hour outside town the fog turned into a damp, heavy rain that continued all the way through eastern France and over the border into Switzerland.

“L’s sending floor plans,” she told him after lunch, paging through files on her phone. “And the schedule.”

“Do we have anything? Any theories?”

“We know he’s got a flair for the dramatic,” A said, tapping her fingers on the car door. “He’ll want an audience, and he’ll want to maximize his efforts. Something early, before anyone has a chance to go home.”

“Is there a keynote address? Opening ceremonies?”

She scanned through the schedule. “Mm. Keynote at five, tonight. Before dinner.”

He frowned at the windshield, the wipers making for a slow percussion over the dull roar of rainfall. “So you’re telling me we’ve got to get in, find V and Shatterheart, stop whatever they’re plotting, and apprehend them both… _before five pm_?”

She glanced at the dashboard clock, glowing a cheery 1 p.m.

They were less than an hour from Bern.

“Yeah,” she said. “Something like that.”

“ _Someday_ we’ll get an easy job.”

“Like hell we will. You’d be bored to _tears_.”

***

Their hotel was a block from the convention hall, and they picked up new cover materials held at the front desk in a manila envelope. T peeked at them as she signed paperwork, then glanced around. The lobby was oppressively clean and hung with flags from every conceivable country that might be visiting. Guests milled about, some reading over brochures, others arguing in languages from all over the globe about their arrangements, or the menu, or the weather. The whole room smelled like suitcases, cologne, and industrial-strength potpourri.

It made his nose itch.

The documents, which he looked at more closely as they headed for an elevator, re-branded them as part of a private security detail for one of the corporate independents in attendance: χ-Corp.

“Is this one of ours?” T asked her, showing her their badges once they were headed up to their room.

“χ-Corp,” she muttered, reading aloud, and raised an eyebrow. “Never heard of it,” she said, stowing her vacationing Mrs. Kingston passport in her duffel and tying her hair back into a short, mercenary style, swapping her middle-class-paycheque-jacket for a trim black sportcoat. She clipped the badge to the lapel and tucked her room key into her slacks just as the door opened, mouth twisting into a sneer at the sight of a crowd of tourists in front of the elevator door. She shouldered through them, barking irritably in German to part the throng. T followed her, eyes narrowed with a grim, military efficiency that brushed off the few not cowed by A’s muted ire.

When they were safely ensconced in their room she finished changing, switching gear and burying anything belonging to Mrs. Kingston in her duffel. He shrugged into his shoulder rig and swapped his coat for a tailored jacket, then set about checking and rechecking their sidearms and the stun guns they’d be hiding under their arms. She fiddled with her silver ring as he checked her kit, commandeering the bathroom for the task.

“Hey,” she said, and he glanced up at the mirror to see her. One of the hotel towels was slung over his shoulders where his hair was drying from a quick wash in the sink.

“Hm?”

He looked so normal, then. For just a moment. Other than the disassembled pistol on the hotel counter, he was the picture of a painfully ordinary tourist getting ready for a dinner date. A bar of soap sudsy in the dish, a toppled complimentary bottle of shampoo next to the sink, half-empty. The towel around his neck, his shirt and tie and jacket hanging on the shower rod, the hanger nicked from the little closet across from the mini-fridge and coffeemaker. His thin white undershirt looked too tight, showing off raw strength and skin tan from travel. She knew him too well; he liked his clothes like that, just a little too small.

“A?” he asked, turning from the mirror to look at her directly.

She looked at him, feeling something in the air. A charge. A change, perhaps.

“Nothing,” she said after a moment as he watched her, the grip of her pistol in one hand and the slide in the other. “Sorry. Nothing.”

“Grab my bag, would you?” he asked, smiling at her. “And call L. I’m almost finished with this, then we can head over.”

***

The convention hall was new. Newly built, newly furnished, newly staffed. It wasn’t the well-oiled machine the convention heads probably wanted, but it clunked along well enough for its purpose, and clumsily enough for theirs.

“L,” A said from the foyer, her face turned toward T’s shoulder in case they were being watched. He scanned the crowd of visiting dignitaries and their bodyguards, looking for a familiar face, or at least a familiar mask.

“I read you. What do you need?”

“Find anything on the guest list?”

“Yeah,” he said, and she heard the smirk in his voice well before he finished his thought. “It’s _boring_.”

“Anything _useful_ ,” she said, clarifying, and he snorted in her ear.

“There’s dozens of countries involved, not to mention ten different international conglomerates. What am I even looking for?”

“Oh put K on the line would you,” A said.

L hissed through his teeth. “Testy, testy. Fine, I’ll get her.”

There was a shuffle of sound, like of cloth, and then K’s soft lilt filtered through her earpiece.

“I’m here.”

“I need anything odd or sudden. Shift changes. Dubious names on staffing lists that might point to alibis or codenames. Sudden additions or drops. Anything you can get me. If someone got to V, they probably wouldn’t have planned for him to be here. They’d have to fit him in quick.”

“Got it.”

“I’m going to mingle in the ballroom. T will head to the kitchens, try to get into the serving rooms. If Shatterheart’s making a move here, he’ll be using the staff to cover up his position.”

K hummed in agreement. “The man certainly loves his little minions.”

“Mm. Radio us if you find anything. Have L scramble evac. We’ll probably need it.”

He gave an all-suffering sigh, and A frowned at the wall behind T’s shoulder.

K’s voice was soft, and just slightly strained. “You’re uh…”

“On speakerphone.”

“Yeah.”

“Do let me know next time.”

“Sure.”

She disconnected the call and took off the ring, handing it to T and pitching her voice low. “Use this if you find any locked doors. I won’t need it in the ballroom.”

He nodded, taking it without comment and sliding it onto his finger. It fit eerily well, and she resolved to question R about what arcane nonsense he’d dabbled in this time.

“We meet on the fourth floor, west wing, at 1630, but radio if you find anything,” she said, and he nodded, checking his receiver as he stepped away, mingling with a small crowd of suits headed across the lobby.

She mingled, wandering the lobby before cautiously entering the ballroom, nodding indirectly as if she knew people she passed. She recognized some faces from other missions—state officials, diplomats, even a CEO. One of the diplomats even gave her a second-glance, and she moved away before he could recognize her from a bomb scare at his embassy the year prior.

Most of the others she didn’t know, or only knew by reputation.

She lingered by a table of refreshments for a moment, keeping her ears open, listening to chatter about trade agreements, embargoes, oil sanctions. The usual. Less helpful. She checked her watch. Half past 3 already.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

The light touch of fingers to her elbow made her turn, finding a lean, willowy man with a shock of carefully spiked black hair beside her. His smile was warm but his eyes, oddly amber in the light, seemed just slightly cool. He knew the game and how to play it, that she was sure of immediately. His suit didn’t quite match his shoulders, and when he offered her a glass of champagne, he moved just a little stiff, like he wasn’t used to wearing it. Tailored, and by someone who was doing him a favor. He was someone’s lackey, then, and the cleanness of his face said it was an older patron. No one who looked so young would’ve gotten in here on his own.

“May I offer you a drink?” he asked, grinning. He was certainly charming, though he looked like he didn’t know how devastating he could be if he tried. The vaguely Russian accent didn’t hurt. “If a glass I nicked from a server counts as getting you a drink, of course.”

“Ah, ja,” she said, smiling and taking the glass with a soft laugh as she pulled up her German mercenary. “Thank you.” She held it to her mouth, grinning at him from behind the rim. “And if I were to thank this valiant glass-thief, what might I call him?”

“Vladimir Serdsov.” His smile was downright sly. “But please, call me Vladimir. And you?”

She smiled, lowering the glass and tucking her hair behind her ear. “Artemis,” she said. “Just Artemis.”

“Not a very German name,” he murmured, grinning.

She laughed, smoothing her fingers over her badge as if self-conscious. “No, I suppose not! I am told my mother was very taken with myth and legend.”

He glanced around and drew her back from the table as some of the other officials squeezed in around them. “Certainly nothing to laugh at!” he said, chuckling softly as he walked, heading toward a small, empty balcony off the main ballroom. She followed, glancing around at the crowd. No sign of anyone of interest to her. “Without myth and legend we would be but animals, after all. Advanced primates, sure, tool-users. But without myth, legend, without tales…we would lack culture.”

She raised an eyebrow, intrigued, and sipped her champagne when he did. He opened the door to the balcony, letting it fall half-shut behind them as he leaned against a marble railing.

“Wouldn’t you agree, Lady Artemis?”

She smiled and leaned against the stone beside him, turned to face him. “I suppose that’s true, yes, though I admit I hadn’t thought of it that way before.”

“We’re nothing without our culture,” he said, drinking again, and she followed suit, if only to be polite. “We’d be back in the stone age, if we didn’t have it. Our advancements are born out of strife and difference and variety. The only trouble is how different we are now—our cultures have diverged too far.”

She smirked and raised her glass. “I’ll drink to that. The topic of this whole symposium, after all.”

“Indeed!” He laughed, drained his glass, and she did the same.

She set her glass on the railing and he glanced at it, his gaze lingering just a little too long.

He looked at her, his smile turning just a little cruel, and in the cold air her vision blurred, swirling drunkenly.

 _Wait_.

She looked down at the glass again.

 _I’m so stupid_.

She grabbed for the railing when her vision spun again. She felt heavy, and her knees threatened not to hold her up. She heard glass shattering but it sounded very far away. The glass. Perhaps she’d knocked it over?

He grabbed her arms and leaned in close. A pin on his collar swam into view, like a falcon with its wings outspread. “Valentin told me to expect you,” he purred in her ear, his breath hot against her skin. She shuddered with revulsion. “The Master’s perfect agent, with the sharp eyes and the blue shine to her hair. He didn’t mention how beautiful you are.” She twisted, trying to shake him off, but he held her tighter. “Shame you won’t be able to stay and see the fireworks. Valentin and I are going to put on _quite_ the show.”

“Shatterheart,” she whispered, her voice twisted and slurring even to her own ear, and he laughed.

“The one and only.”

He released her and spun away, and she sagged against the marble railing when her knees gave under her. Her throat felt too tight, her lungs burning for air.

" _Spokojnoj Nochi_ , ‘Artemis,’” he purred, slipping through the door and back into the crowd inside. She lurched after him, flinging open the door, but her vision swayed and smeared and she couldn’t find his back among the crowd. She pushed through a small group of men in suits that felt like wire when she touched them, and distantly behind her she could hear people yelling at her. She must’ve looked a mess, enough that the crowds split in front of her as she staggered toward the doors to the lobby, sweat stinging her eyes as she pounded the button for the elevator and fumbled at her phone. When the doors split open she lurched forward and crumpled into the corner, the stainless steel of the elevator cool against her burning skin.

***

The serving staff mostly ignored T as he prowled through room after room, blending into groups and peeking inside every “staff only” door he found as soon as everyone’s backs were turned. Eventually he split away from the others and prowled darkened halls in silence. L’s maps indicated he was somewhere under the main ballroom. His wounded leg ached with the promise of imminent violence and he slid a hand to his stun gun.

Footsteps squeaked further ahead.

He slid up to a corner, tucking himself into shadows and peering around. A patrol of two men coming his way, armed with silenced pistols and not even a falsified badge between them.

He let go of the stun gun and waited until they passed him, sliding out behind them and cracking their heads together before they could so much as ask “did you hear something?”

Finding an empty storage room with two armed men over his shoulders wasn’t the easiest thing he’d done all week. He met a locked door and almost bypassed it, then paused. He held out the ring, waiting for a grinding of metal and a _click_ , and cracked the door open slightly, peering inside.

An empty room. Security, given the camera feeds flickering on screens around the room. A man sat slumped over the console in a chair, and T dumped his two in the corner before checking the guard.

Blood had congealed on the keyboard under his shattered skull. Small-gauge bullet through the temple.

“Damn,” T breathed, shaking his head, and checked the feeds. Further ahead of the hall he was on was a central room, directly under the ballroom, where at least six different hallways converged. What T could see in the room was mostly dark, other than a young man moving around the room, his hair almost luminescent on the feed.

T growled, squinting at the display, then tore away from the screens and out into the hall, breaking off the door handle behind him so the others couldn’t follow.

He moved as fast as he dared, avoiding main hallways where there might be patrols. He took a shortcut through a locked storage room, letting the ring get him through each door, and only stopped when V’s room sat ahead of him.

What didn’t read clearly across a CCTV feed was all too clear from here, cast in the grim, spare light of a single lamp hanging from the ceiling.

Explosives. Military grade, by the look of it. And a _lot_ of it.

Shatterheart certainly didn’t care about _subtlety_.

T pulled his stun gun and crept forward as V bent to prime another box.

When T was barely twice arm’s length from him V lifted his head, staring at the wall.

“You never were as stealthy as A,” he said.

T huffed through his nose and stopped, watching him. “No, that’s true.”

“Odd that she sent you down here alone,” V said.

“Not really,” T said, and V looked over at him.

“No?” V said, standing again. There was something in his hand, like a miniaturized crossbow, rigged to a revolver-style clip. Archaic, but no less lethal.

_Ah. Quartermaster’s stolen kit._

“She sent you down here, on the sneaky path. The one requiring agility and care. While she took the…what. The social route?”

T shrugged, grinning. “She likes crowds more than I do.”

V laughed, sharp and unkind. “Of course. And yet she sent you to me. You, who I’ve already shot once.”

“Only a wound,” T said. He decided not to share that it had been his idea to be the one looking for V. “We both know you won’t actually kill me.”

“Do we indeed,” V said, a twisted snarl frozen across his mouth as he pulled the crossbow up, the loaded bolt pointed at T’s heart.

“We do,” T said, with a calmness he didn’t entirely feel, searching for words. “Whatever Shatterheart did to you, you’re still you in there.”

A crack went through V’s mask and his hand shook, the bolt glinting in the lamplight. “Shatterheart didn’t do anything to me,” he snapped, but there was a spark of fear in his eye that made T want to smile.

“Of course he did,” T said, stepping forward until he was almost under the lamp. “He turned you against us. What was it? Smoke bomb? Poison dart? Sonic brainwave manipulation?”

T’s earpiece crackled uncomfortably. Interference?

V flinched, stepping forward and brandishing the ancient weapon like he was going to prove a point. “Shut up. You don’t understand.”

“Of course I do,” T said, hiding a frown. Was A trying to reach him? “I know you better than anybody else in the Castle, except maybe S.”

V’s eye twitched and he turned his head away like he couldn’t bear to look at him. “Sh-shut up.”

“He was heartbroken that you vanished, you know,” T said, pressing his advantage. “I’ve never seen him look so out of sorts.”

V lurched forward again, the bolt inches from T’s tie. “Shut up!” In the direct light he looked pale, tired. Sick, even. His eyes were amber-gold and his hair was sticking to his skin with sweat.

T carefully raised his hand and took hold of V’s, pushing his hand to the side so the weapon was pointed at the wall.

V looked like he might cry, his eyes wet, but…bluer now.

“T,” he whispered, his breath hitching. T leaned in closer, brow furrowed. “If I succeed he and I will both die.”

“Not today,” T said. “Not a chance.”

V grimaced, squinting his eyes shut, resigning himself to T’s stubbornness. “Zap me,” he said. “Get him out.”

T hesitated.

“Do it. Please.”

T snarled and slammed the stun gun up into V’s gut, holding it there as V convulsed and shook and spasmed away from him, jerking away and falling to the floor in a crash, twitching and seizing on the ground.

T crouched over him when the static died off, checking his eyes.

Blue. Bluer than the sky.

“That’s my V.”

“You have to get to A,” V whispered, his voice hoarse, a faint trail of smoke coming from his shirt. “Shatterheart…poison…”

T hissed in frustration and looked around. “What about the bombs?”

“I’ll get it. This is my fault, I’ll fix it.”

T froze at the sound of boots coming his way and snatched V’s strange crossbow from the ground, spinning to fire at two guards coming up behind them, dropping them each in succession.

“Go,” V said, pushing weakly at T’s shoulder. T pushed the weapon back into his hand, frowned meaningfully, and took off for the stairs.

***

Reversing his path up out of the basement was harder, in its own way, than getting down had been. How many of Shattertheart’s guards were embedded here, he wasn’t sure, but he’d already emptied a clip of his own pistol and snapped two necks.

As soon as he was out of the basement his receiver crackled to life.

“T! T! Where the hell are you?”

“L?” he snapped, hopping from step to railing to step again as he tore up the stairs to the main level.

A string of swearing broke through and he winced at the volume.

“T, Shatterheart’s in the ballroom. A radioed.”

“Where is she?”

“Third floor, west wing. Looks like it’s a public restroom.”

“Shit.” T raced through the lobby. The doors to the ballroom were standing open, a crowd milling about. “L. I can’t go into the ballroom. It’s packed. I’ll never find him.”

“T if he gets away—”

Another voice cut through on the radio.

“Agent. If Shatterheart gets away all is lost.”

“Master,” T breathed. “Sir, I’ve recovered V. He’s disengaging Shatterheart’s work downstairs.” He headed for the elevators, weaving through a crowd of officials, a plan coalescing in his mind like the blast of a gun. “L, call in a bomb threat. Evacuate the building. Just in case.”

Keys tapping underscored L’s muttered “got it!” but the Master’s voice cut through the audio feed like a sword. “ _Agent_. Capture Shatterheart. We can’t let him slip away again.”

“Sir, A’s been compromised, I have to get to her first.”

“You will do no such thing!”

For a moment, just a moment, T hesitated.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, yanking the receiver from his ear and shoving it into his pocket as it crackled with the Master’s next shout.

T skidded clear of a crowd and slid up to the elevators where a man with black hair and gold eyes was standing, leaning against the buttons. T frowned. His stun gun would be recharging for at least another minute. He turned and bolted for the stairs, taking them three at a time. He heard the door open behind him and slam shut, then hurried footsteps, and he leapt the last landing and ripped out into the hall.

A was curled against the door of the restroom, her tie in one hand, hastily removed and not even fully unknotted. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth and her nose.

A man stood above her, looking down at her disapprovingly. His head, bald and startlingly dark from sun, glinted in the lamplight. He turned at the sound of T’s footsteps. A wide grin split his face, and a white wisp of beard hung from his chin.

“Interesting,” he said, in a voice like gravel and smoke. “We wondered when you would arrive.”

“We?” he started, and the door to the stairwell open and shut behind him. The man from the elevators stepped out into the hall, adjusting his cuffs. He walked past T, sliding into place at the strange man’s side.

“I’m the heart and soul of χ-Corp, boy,” the man said, smoothing down his tie. “You’re here on my roster. Better show some respect.”

T slid back a step, cautious, and glanced at A. “I…see,” he said, looking at the younger man with the black hair.

“Vlad,” the old man said, and the boy took a pistol from a holster under his arm. “Do take care of them, won’t you.”

“With pleasure.”

The old man turned and headed down the hall, and the boy—Vlad—raised his pistol with a snap, squeezing the trigger.

T swore and threw up his arms, turning to try to at least keep the bullets from hitting vital organs. His ring burned with heat, throwing up a glowing gold barrier, and the bullets pinged off harmlessly just before it dissipated. Vlad cursed and took off down the hall, leaping out a window with a crash of shattering glass. T raced after him, but lost him in the street as Vlad bled into the crowd.

He spun and grabbed A, dragging her into the bathroom to pull her shirt open and check for a pulse. Thready, but still there. Her breathing was so slow she could’ve only been asleep, if it weren’t for the circumstances. He slid his receiver back into his ear, listening for a second. The Master had evidently left the comm.

“L?” he asked.

“ _Jesus,_ T, you know how to give a man a heart attack!”

“L. Please tell me you scrambled that evac. We’re gonna need medical here, STAT.”


	4. Epilogue: Manchester

When T was finally allowed to see her again, she was finally up and moving, though she still looked a little pale and drawn, and she kept a fluffy robe gathered close around her.

“I heard you were suspended,” she said, without looking away from the window of her flat, overlooking the city.

“Mm,” he said, sliding out of his boots as he locked the door behind him. “Me and V both. Six weeks, while I re-take all my evaluations.”

“Mm.”

“Gotta prove my loyalty again, I suppose,” he said, crossing the room to stand next to her. The city outside was gloomy with rain and smog.

She sighed, her breath fogging the glass.

“I don’t have to prove it to you too, do I?”

She smirked, glancing toward him to see his face reflected in the glass. “Of course not.”

He ran a finger up the back of her robe, trailing her spine. She shivered and turned toward him, curling her arms under his, and he held her tight to his chest.

“Thought you said you’d put the mission first,” she said, with her face pressed into the collar of his shirt so she could smell his cologne, her nose resting in the hollow of his throat.

“ _You_ said that, actually,” he said, sounding smug, and he pressed his lips to the top of her head. “I just agreed. Well. And lied, of course.”

She snorted and tangled her fingers into the back of his jacket. “I knew you lied.”

He smiled, his laugh a rumble in his chest that she felt more so than heard.

“I knew you did too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


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